Immediately after posting The PRIMER Fairness Doctrine, I checked my email and found the following message from Rod Lopez-Fabrega.
I am thus posting his original letter, immediately below this message, and will follow it with some comments about this message. (Since comments about his original letter have already been posted as Letter to The Hour, I will not include any additional comments about that here.)
Yes, absolutely, you may post both my letters on your site, and I will look forward to your comments.
I do believe my central question deserves a reasoned response because the disproportionate influence of your lobbies on Washington is worrisome. I recognize the fact that at the basis the real problem may lie with our electoral system made much worse by recent pronouncements made by the Supreme Court.
As I said in my original letter, if I were a citizen of Israel, I would do whatever it takes to defend my country. However, that does not mean I am comfortable as an American citizen to being tied to such commitments for another country than my own.
Let me point out also that I have been to Israel twice and have been enormously impressed by what they have achieved. One only needs to look at a map to see the vulnerable shape of Israel, easily cut in two at the waist. I wish them all the best. At the same time, as has been pointed out by many Jewish liberal friends, the original inhabitants have been trampled mercilessly.
Clearly, there are few if any solutions, but I worry to see U.S. politicians in the unseemly position of bending over for any pressure group in the enviable position of granting or withdrawing votes and those ugly campaign funds to influence the foreign policy of the United States of America.
As an American yourself, doesn't this reality give you pause?
Rod Lopez-Fabrega
The letter published August 19:
Israel American Public Affairs Committee
To the Editor:
It is interesting to note the flood of reaction to a few letters published in The Hour questioning the recent actions of the IDF ( Israel Defense Force) off the coast of Israel. These defensive retorts under score the dilemma faced by those of us who deeply admire what Israelis have accomplished with that barren piece of real estate they have occupied since 1948 and at the same time decry the shameful way they have treated the previous occupants.
The knee- jerk reaction from ( presumably) American citizens over a mismanaged incident in Middle Eastern waters serves to raise more questions about the Israel- United States relationship. " Since the Six- Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel", as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt put it in their article four years ago for the London Review of Books. One might begin to wonder why this is so, considering that this unquestioning relationship has harmed US Middle Eastern policy toward all the other states in the Middle East. One answer is that Israel, located in a hostile neighborhood, is an island of democracy that shares our values. Again, Mearsheimer and Walt question the shared values: " Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kin ship." Are these shared values when a very large portion of Israel's population is treated as third- class citizens? One likes to believe that the US has grown past that stage in its own development.
Another question arises when one notes that the US provides at least $ 3 billion in direct aide to Israel every year and that Israel- unlike requirements placed on other countries that are recipients of US aid- needs to account for only 25 percent of where and how it spends that largesse. A good portion reportedly goes to ensuring that Israel is militarily the most powerful entity in the Middle East.
1. A more immediately troubling question pops up when one begins to note the undue influence the Israel lobby has on the US government. We have seen how presidential hopefuls must genuflect to AIPAC ( American Israel Public Affairs Committee) before every US election, and how any government official or member of the media who raises even a slight question about the relationship between US and Israel is made to pay dearly for the " error in judgment". One small but recent example of effects on the media is the fate suffered by veteran journalist Helen Thomas of the press corps attending the White House. OK, so Helen was careless in her comments, but banishment forever? Far more serious is the US commitment to go to war against all comers if an intemperate Israeli leader moves unilaterally to attack his neighbors.
Then there is the influence AIPAC is quite openly exerting on US College campuses, indoctrinating young campus leaders to the cause of Israel as potential movers and shakers of future US governments.
2. It is clear and understandable that any Israeli citizen will do whatever it takes to protect the land he or she claims- rightly or wrongly-- as a birthright. However, in the case of AIPAC, which demonstrably has a huge influence on the American government, is it a case of the tail wagging the dog?
The name 'American Israel Public Affairs Committee' raises the question about the placement of its members' primary loyalties- all presumably American citizens. That question is: Would changing the name to 'Israel American Public Affairs Committee' be more representative of the priorities of its members?
Rod Lopez- Fabrega
Norwalk
We have some comments about Mr. Lopez-Fabrega's message preceding the above letter.
I personally (this is a personal opinion and does not represent PRIMER, which is an media-monitoring organization and not a political organization) share Lopez-Fabrega's concern about harmful effects of campaign funds, although I see no way - short of Constitutional amendments emasculating the right to freedom of speech - of changing the situation for the better and believe all our efforts at campaign reform have actually been counterproductive.
That said, it is clear the anti-Israel lobby has put tremendous resources into its fight and its resources dwarf those of the Jewish community and of the non-Jewish supporters of Israel. It's a tribute to the intelligence and patriotism of our elected representatives that they have generally resisted that pressure and tried to act in America's best interest rather than in the interest of the "American House of Saud."
I'm also pleased that Oopez-Fabrega recognizes the vulnerability of tiny Israel as well as its tremendous achievements.
There is also a grain of truth in his assertion that "the original inhabitants have been trampled mercilessly," but not in the way he apparently intends.
I believe he intends to convey the impression that the Palestinian Arabs are "the original inhabitants" and the Israelis have "trampled mercilessly" on them, but both are untrue.
Nobody really knows who the original inhabitants were. The Biblical Canaanites were there before the Israelites (the ancestors of today's Jews, including Jewish Israelis), but neither they nor any of their predecessors have survived as an identifiable group. The present day Jews are actually the closest of any to "original inhabitants," while the Palestinian Arabs are relative newcomers.
It's also true that, by today's standards, the Israelites trampled their predecessors mercilessly, as the Romans later did with the Israelites and as the Palestinian and other Arabs have tried, fortunately unsuccessfully, tried to do with the Israelis.
It's also true that their Arab brethren and even their own leadership have treated the Palestinian Arabs shamefully.
It's noteworthy (although, typically, this was generally unreported in the American press) Lebanon only recently gave Palestinian Arabs the same rights as other foreigners - although they still do not have the right to practice many professions or to become citizens. This is typical of their treatment throughout the Arab world. In the Middle East, only in Jordan (which itself comprises nearly 80% of Mandatory Palestine) and Israel are Palestinian Arabs able to be citizens.
It's also worth noting the families of many if not most of the Palestinian Arabs now in other Arab countries have actually resided in those countries far longer than they ever resided in either Israel or the disputed territories, since many of their families were relatively recent immigrants to Palestine, attracted by the economic expansion that came with the Zionist development.
Ironically, some of them are undoubtedly being denied citizenship by the very countries from which their families originated before relatively recently migrating to Palestine.
Within Israel, Arab citizens have the same legal rights as Jewish citizens except for their not being subject to either the draft or the arbitrary oversight of the Orthodox Jewish rabbinical control over Jewish religious affairs.
While Israel was in control of the disputed territories, the Arabs there had more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East except for Israel itself.
So, certainly, Israel has not trampled on the Palestinian Arabs. In fact, a strong argument can be made that Israel has treated the Palestinian Arabs better, and with more respect, than anyone else.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The PRIMER Fairness Doctrine
On August 19, The Hour (Norwalk, Connecticut) published an error-filled, misleading anti-Israel missive written by Rod Lopez-Fabrega.
I immediately composed a response and posted it on the PRIMER blog. It may be viewed at http://primerct.blogspot.com/2010/08/letter-to-hour.html. I submitted it to The Hour, which published it on August 22 as an op-ed with the title "Israel falsely accused of distractor's sins."
On August 26, PRIMER received the following message from Lopez-Fabrega:
Note: We actually would have preferred to include Lopez-Fabrega's original letter, both to be fair and to give context to our post, but because of copyright concerns, PRIMER generally refrains from fully posting items from newspapers without the consent of the authors. We have thus informed Lopez-Fabrega and asked for his permission. Assuming he gives his permission, we will post his original letter shortly.
The following is the letter Lopez-Fabrega sent us but which has not yet been published in The Hour. We follow it with some of our own comments and will be happy to air additional comments of Lopez-Fabrega.
To the Editor of The Hour:
I thank Mr. Alan Stein, president of PRIMER-CT (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) for his measured and non-hysterical rebuttal of my letter to the Hour ("Israel American Public Affairs Committee"--8/19/10). However, I find it interesting that Stein has limited his rhetorical measurements on the one hand to a comparison of the relative amounts of American taxpayers' funds given to Israel versus amounts given to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and on the other hand to justifying why, "…supporters of the American-Israel partnership exercise their Constitutional right to try to influence our government while ignoring the pervasive influence of the Arab oil states."
Regarding his reference to the American-Israel partnership, an explanation is needed as to why he believes an influence lobby for a foreign government can be considered to be in partnership with the United States Government. To his apportionment of our taxpayer dollars, I would say that he is quite correct: this many dollars to arm Israel, this many to arm Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. How in the world have we gotten ourselves in such a fix? We have bought and are paying for a perilously precarious and uncertain balance of racial, religious and geographic disputes that are thousands of years old. Why? Are we back to the OIL question or is it just our "God-given responsibility" to exert our benevolent hegemony over the Middle East? Or as Christian Zionists would have it, is the real agenda to gain millions of converts in preparation for the arrival of The Rapture, and a Biblical God destroys all non-Christians?
As to Stein's defense of Israel's enormous influence on the United States government through the actions of influence peddling agencies such as his own, all designed to ensure Israel's primary position in our hegemonic equation for the Middle East, I would simply counter with a few informed opinions of recent years:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, wrote, "Over the years Israel has been the beneficiary of privileged - indeed, highly preferential - financial assistance, out of all proportion to what the United States extends to any other country. The massive aid to Israel is in effect a huge entitlement that enriches the relatively prosperous Israelis at the cost of the American taxpayer. Money being fungible, that aid also pays for the very settlements that America opposes and that impede the peace process.."
Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck wrote that, "Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby's views of Israel's interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies."
Michael Scheuer, a former senior official at the C.I.A. and now a terrorism analyst for CBS News, said to National Public Radio that Israel, has engaged in one of the most successful campaigns to influence public opinion in the United States ever conducted by a foreign government.
In a measured response, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT said, "There are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."
Madeleine Albright in May 2006 noted America's special relationship with Israel and said, "Clearly the U.S. has linked itself to Israel in many ways". She equally acknowledged, "there is no doubt that there is a very strong Israeli lobby", and she spoke of the resistance she encountered from the lobby over airplane sales to Saudi Arabia in 1978, during her tenure on the National Security Council in the Carter administration. Albright noted "the difficulties in dealing with the Middle East process is the fact not so much of any lobby, but that it is a very difficult issue that involves the division of land, religion."
As long ago as Oct 2009, Jon Stewart's comedy news show The Daily Show was reportedly under fire from pro-Israeli groups for giving airtime to two pro-Palestinian figures, activist Mustafa Barghouti and human rights activist Anna Baltzer, author of "A Witness in Palestine", who explained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of the Palestinian side. As reported by bloggers, the show "was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel.."
There are other cautious comments regarding Israel's influence on the United States government and, as might be expected, a torrent of often vituperative rebuttals in print. Then there is the preponderance of motion pictures extolling the undeniable miracle Israel has achieved in converting barren land into a working country-with little attention to centuries-old productive Palestinian farms and orchards that have been wiped out in the process.
Finally, it is noted that Mr. Stein has published his response to my letter very prominently in his site, www.primerct.org but did not see fit to print my letter in order to expose his readers to another point of view.
We will refer to specific points made by Lopez-Fabrega and comment on them.
Lopez-Fabrega asks why we limited our "rhetorical measurement."
Basically, lack of time and space. Our response was already far longer than a typical letter (the format in which it was submitted) and stretching the limit for the length of an op-ed. To respond to all the inaccuracies in Lopez-Fabrega's letter would have taken volumes, so we tried to restrict ourselves to the most blatant errors and distortions in Lopez-Fabrega's letter.
We are doing the same with these comments on the above letter.
Lopez-Fabrega writes "an explanation is needed as to why he believes an influence lobby for a foreign government can be considered to be in partnership with the United States Government."
In doing so, he apparently demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the role of AIPAC. This perhaps explains many of his other misrepresentations. As they say in the computer biz, "garbage in, garbage out."
In contrast to the Saudi lobby, AIPAC is definitely not "an influence lobby for a foreign government." AIPAC is a lobby of Americans, lobbying for what they believe is America's interest: a strong partnership between America and its only real friend and reliable ally in the Middle East.
The Saudi lobby is a far different creature. It consists of mercenaries bought and paid for by immense Saudi oil money, lobbying for a foreign government and often against American interests.
Lopez-Fabrega quotes opinions of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Edward Peck, Michael Scheuer and Noam Chomsky, but those are opinions voiced by highly biased individuals, some being irrationally and viscerally anti-Israel, and virtually worthless. They do not represent fact and, based on the sources, are best disregarded by intelligent people.
Indeed, rather than the views of the supporters of Israel becoming "the basis of U.S. Middle East policies," it has been the enormous Arab oil lobby that has distorted American policy.
We again refer readers to the documented evidence in Steven Emerson's "The American House of Saud" and Mitchell Bard's "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," pointing out the Saudi lobby is just that, foreign and trying to further the interests of a foreign and in many ways alien nation, whereas AIPAC is an American lobby trying to further American interests.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to resistance to military sales to Saudi Arabia, but completely misses the real lesson: All those sales were approved, despite quite reasonable opposition from supporters of Israel concerned about the threat the represented.
This example demonstrates that it is the Arab oil lobby which is the truly powerful, distorting American foreign policy.
It's also worth noting that in some of those sales, Israel's supporters were assured restrictions were being imposed to ensure they would not pose a threat to Israel, but once the weapons were delivered those restrictions were generally ignored by the Saudis.
Those weapons also did nothing to protect the Saudis from real threats. When they were finally faced with a real threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we sent in American soldiers to protect the Saudis.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to criticism when Jon Stewart gave airtime to Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer, whom Lopez-Fabrega inaccurately describes as pro-Palestinian and a human rights activist. (They are really just anti-Israel and have certainly shown no interest in the human rights of Israelis violated by Arab terrorists.)
He is apparently unhappy that supporters of Israel would exercise their right to criticize Stewart for doing something that was not just unbalance, but out of character for his show.
One wonders whether he has ever expressed displeasure at the repeated instances of anti-Israel fanatics acting, often violently, to prevent Israelis and supporters of Israel from speaking.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to "cautious comments regarding Israel’s influence on the United States government" but a "torrent of often vituperative rebuttals in print."
The reality is virtually the reverse.
There is plenty of both unfair and vociferous railing against alleged Israeli influence, which generally elicits little response with any response generally being quite reasoned.
In contrast, there is hardly anything said about the vast influence of the "American House of Saud."
Lopez-Fabrega refers to "centuries-old productive Palestinian farms and orchards" allegedly wiped out in the process of Israel's miraculous redevelopment of the Land of Milk and Honey.
The Zionist reclamation of Eretz Yisrael generally involved land legally purchased, often at exorbitant prices, from absentee owners and was often the worst land around. There was certainly no policy of wiping out farms and orchards. (Incidentally, at the time, the Arabs living there did not consider themselves Palestinians, a term then generally understood to refer to Jews and one which was not generally applied to Arabs until after 1967.)
It's interesting, in a very sad way, that one of the widespread tactics of the Palestinian Arabs during their first intifada was to set fire to trees planted by Israel, destroying vast expanses of forest created by Israel out of what had been wasteland.
Lopez-Fabrega concludes: "Finally, it is noted that Mr. Stein has published his response to my letter very prominently in his site, www.primerct.org but did not see fit to print my letter in order to expose his readers to another point of view."
As we noted earlier, it was not a case of not seeing fit to print his letter, but of being cautious about copyright issues. His original letter will be posted here if he gives permission.
While anti-Israel fanatics put a tremendous amount of resources into preventing the free speech of supporters of Israel (the term "lawfare" is sometimes used to describe this widespread phenomenon), it is extremely rare and out of the mainstream for supporters of Israel to do anything to try to keep the anti-Israel activists from having their say. We generally trust that if the facts are put forth, intelligent people will recognize the fundamental differences between Israel and its enemies, including the fact that Israel is a Western-oriented democracy sharing our core American values and repeatedly going the extra mile to try to achieve peace, while its enemies have repeatedly rejected peace and even the so-called "moderates" like Mahmoud Abbas have not abandoned the dream of destroying Israel.
Finally, we again note we have tried to be brief and have addressed only a portion of the misrepresentations and distortions in Lopez-Fabrega's letter.
I immediately composed a response and posted it on the PRIMER blog. It may be viewed at http://primerct.blogspot.com/2010/08/letter-to-hour.html. I submitted it to The Hour, which published it on August 22 as an op-ed with the title "Israel falsely accused of distractor's sins."
On August 26, PRIMER received the following message from Lopez-Fabrega:
Mr. Stein: The Hour has not see fit to print my response to your Op-Ed to them of 8/22/10 in which you reference my questions about the undue influence Israel lobbies have on the U.S. Government. Therefore, I send it to you directly here. With all due respect to you and to Israel, I suggest this question requires a cogent answer, and your readers need to see a different point of view if you are to be considered fair and balanced.
Note: We actually would have preferred to include Lopez-Fabrega's original letter, both to be fair and to give context to our post, but because of copyright concerns, PRIMER generally refrains from fully posting items from newspapers without the consent of the authors. We have thus informed Lopez-Fabrega and asked for his permission. Assuming he gives his permission, we will post his original letter shortly.
The following is the letter Lopez-Fabrega sent us but which has not yet been published in The Hour. We follow it with some of our own comments and will be happy to air additional comments of Lopez-Fabrega.
To the Editor of The Hour:
I thank Mr. Alan Stein, president of PRIMER-CT (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) for his measured and non-hysterical rebuttal of my letter to the Hour ("Israel American Public Affairs Committee"--8/19/10). However, I find it interesting that Stein has limited his rhetorical measurements on the one hand to a comparison of the relative amounts of American taxpayers' funds given to Israel versus amounts given to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and on the other hand to justifying why, "…supporters of the American-Israel partnership exercise their Constitutional right to try to influence our government while ignoring the pervasive influence of the Arab oil states."
Regarding his reference to the American-Israel partnership, an explanation is needed as to why he believes an influence lobby for a foreign government can be considered to be in partnership with the United States Government. To his apportionment of our taxpayer dollars, I would say that he is quite correct: this many dollars to arm Israel, this many to arm Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. How in the world have we gotten ourselves in such a fix? We have bought and are paying for a perilously precarious and uncertain balance of racial, religious and geographic disputes that are thousands of years old. Why? Are we back to the OIL question or is it just our "God-given responsibility" to exert our benevolent hegemony over the Middle East? Or as Christian Zionists would have it, is the real agenda to gain millions of converts in preparation for the arrival of The Rapture, and a Biblical God destroys all non-Christians?
As to Stein's defense of Israel's enormous influence on the United States government through the actions of influence peddling agencies such as his own, all designed to ensure Israel's primary position in our hegemonic equation for the Middle East, I would simply counter with a few informed opinions of recent years:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, wrote, "Over the years Israel has been the beneficiary of privileged - indeed, highly preferential - financial assistance, out of all proportion to what the United States extends to any other country. The massive aid to Israel is in effect a huge entitlement that enriches the relatively prosperous Israelis at the cost of the American taxpayer. Money being fungible, that aid also pays for the very settlements that America opposes and that impede the peace process.."
Former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck wrote that, "Opinions differ on the long-term costs and benefits for both nations, but the lobby's views of Israel's interests have become the basis of U.S. Middle East policies."
Michael Scheuer, a former senior official at the C.I.A. and now a terrorism analyst for CBS News, said to National Public Radio that Israel, has engaged in one of the most successful campaigns to influence public opinion in the United States ever conducted by a foreign government.
In a measured response, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT said, "There are far more powerful interests that have a stake in what happens in the Persian Gulf region than does AIPAC [or the Lobby generally], such as the oil companies, the arms industry and other special interests whose lobbying influence and campaign contributions far surpass that of the much-vaunted Zionist lobby and its allied donors to congressional races."
Madeleine Albright in May 2006 noted America's special relationship with Israel and said, "Clearly the U.S. has linked itself to Israel in many ways". She equally acknowledged, "there is no doubt that there is a very strong Israeli lobby", and she spoke of the resistance she encountered from the lobby over airplane sales to Saudi Arabia in 1978, during her tenure on the National Security Council in the Carter administration. Albright noted "the difficulties in dealing with the Middle East process is the fact not so much of any lobby, but that it is a very difficult issue that involves the division of land, religion."
As long ago as Oct 2009, Jon Stewart's comedy news show The Daily Show was reportedly under fire from pro-Israeli groups for giving airtime to two pro-Palestinian figures, activist Mustafa Barghouti and human rights activist Anna Baltzer, author of "A Witness in Palestine", who explained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of the Palestinian side. As reported by bloggers, the show "was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel.."
There are other cautious comments regarding Israel's influence on the United States government and, as might be expected, a torrent of often vituperative rebuttals in print. Then there is the preponderance of motion pictures extolling the undeniable miracle Israel has achieved in converting barren land into a working country-with little attention to centuries-old productive Palestinian farms and orchards that have been wiped out in the process.
Finally, it is noted that Mr. Stein has published his response to my letter very prominently in his site, www.primerct.org but did not see fit to print my letter in order to expose his readers to another point of view.
We will refer to specific points made by Lopez-Fabrega and comment on them.
Lopez-Fabrega asks why we limited our "rhetorical measurement."
Basically, lack of time and space. Our response was already far longer than a typical letter (the format in which it was submitted) and stretching the limit for the length of an op-ed. To respond to all the inaccuracies in Lopez-Fabrega's letter would have taken volumes, so we tried to restrict ourselves to the most blatant errors and distortions in Lopez-Fabrega's letter.
We are doing the same with these comments on the above letter.
Lopez-Fabrega writes "an explanation is needed as to why he believes an influence lobby for a foreign government can be considered to be in partnership with the United States Government."
In doing so, he apparently demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the role of AIPAC. This perhaps explains many of his other misrepresentations. As they say in the computer biz, "garbage in, garbage out."
In contrast to the Saudi lobby, AIPAC is definitely not "an influence lobby for a foreign government." AIPAC is a lobby of Americans, lobbying for what they believe is America's interest: a strong partnership between America and its only real friend and reliable ally in the Middle East.
The Saudi lobby is a far different creature. It consists of mercenaries bought and paid for by immense Saudi oil money, lobbying for a foreign government and often against American interests.
Lopez-Fabrega quotes opinions of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Edward Peck, Michael Scheuer and Noam Chomsky, but those are opinions voiced by highly biased individuals, some being irrationally and viscerally anti-Israel, and virtually worthless. They do not represent fact and, based on the sources, are best disregarded by intelligent people.
Indeed, rather than the views of the supporters of Israel becoming "the basis of U.S. Middle East policies," it has been the enormous Arab oil lobby that has distorted American policy.
We again refer readers to the documented evidence in Steven Emerson's "The American House of Saud" and Mitchell Bard's "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," pointing out the Saudi lobby is just that, foreign and trying to further the interests of a foreign and in many ways alien nation, whereas AIPAC is an American lobby trying to further American interests.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to resistance to military sales to Saudi Arabia, but completely misses the real lesson: All those sales were approved, despite quite reasonable opposition from supporters of Israel concerned about the threat the represented.
This example demonstrates that it is the Arab oil lobby which is the truly powerful, distorting American foreign policy.
It's also worth noting that in some of those sales, Israel's supporters were assured restrictions were being imposed to ensure they would not pose a threat to Israel, but once the weapons were delivered those restrictions were generally ignored by the Saudis.
Those weapons also did nothing to protect the Saudis from real threats. When they were finally faced with a real threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we sent in American soldiers to protect the Saudis.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to criticism when Jon Stewart gave airtime to Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer, whom Lopez-Fabrega inaccurately describes as pro-Palestinian and a human rights activist. (They are really just anti-Israel and have certainly shown no interest in the human rights of Israelis violated by Arab terrorists.)
He is apparently unhappy that supporters of Israel would exercise their right to criticize Stewart for doing something that was not just unbalance, but out of character for his show.
One wonders whether he has ever expressed displeasure at the repeated instances of anti-Israel fanatics acting, often violently, to prevent Israelis and supporters of Israel from speaking.
Lopez-Fabrega refers to "cautious comments regarding Israel’s influence on the United States government" but a "torrent of often vituperative rebuttals in print."
The reality is virtually the reverse.
There is plenty of both unfair and vociferous railing against alleged Israeli influence, which generally elicits little response with any response generally being quite reasoned.
In contrast, there is hardly anything said about the vast influence of the "American House of Saud."
Lopez-Fabrega refers to "centuries-old productive Palestinian farms and orchards" allegedly wiped out in the process of Israel's miraculous redevelopment of the Land of Milk and Honey.
The Zionist reclamation of Eretz Yisrael generally involved land legally purchased, often at exorbitant prices, from absentee owners and was often the worst land around. There was certainly no policy of wiping out farms and orchards. (Incidentally, at the time, the Arabs living there did not consider themselves Palestinians, a term then generally understood to refer to Jews and one which was not generally applied to Arabs until after 1967.)
It's interesting, in a very sad way, that one of the widespread tactics of the Palestinian Arabs during their first intifada was to set fire to trees planted by Israel, destroying vast expanses of forest created by Israel out of what had been wasteland.
Lopez-Fabrega concludes: "Finally, it is noted that Mr. Stein has published his response to my letter very prominently in his site, www.primerct.org but did not see fit to print my letter in order to expose his readers to another point of view."
As we noted earlier, it was not a case of not seeing fit to print his letter, but of being cautious about copyright issues. His original letter will be posted here if he gives permission.
While anti-Israel fanatics put a tremendous amount of resources into preventing the free speech of supporters of Israel (the term "lawfare" is sometimes used to describe this widespread phenomenon), it is extremely rare and out of the mainstream for supporters of Israel to do anything to try to keep the anti-Israel activists from having their say. We generally trust that if the facts are put forth, intelligent people will recognize the fundamental differences between Israel and its enemies, including the fact that Israel is a Western-oriented democracy sharing our core American values and repeatedly going the extra mile to try to achieve peace, while its enemies have repeatedly rejected peace and even the so-called "moderates" like Mahmoud Abbas have not abandoned the dream of destroying Israel.
Finally, we again note we have tried to be brief and have addressed only a portion of the misrepresentations and distortions in Lopez-Fabrega's letter.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Concerning the Israeli-Palestinian Issue
This was sent to PRIMER by activist Edward Wood. The closing observations that Israel's enemies are America's enemies and of the importance of recognizing that are particularly important.
The truth of the matter is, as I see it, is that the decades of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis were and continue to be nothing more than buying time for the enemies of Israel to strengthen their positions. The Palestinians and their allies have never been serious about wanting their own state co-existing alongside Israel - they want their own state to exist INSTEAD of Israel. Organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah which essentially are running the show have made this crystal clear.
Should the negotiations ever get to a point where a fledgling Palestinian state comes to exist, the West Bank is the most likely location for it. We have already seen how well this has worked out in microcosm with Gaza the past five years, haven't we?
In my opinion, there is no way the Muslim world will ever accept the existence of Israel for many reasons. We have the long-standing ancestral animosity between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Jacob.
The advent of Islam has only added yet another unresolvable bone of contention between them and the democracy practiced in Israel is itself an affront to the authoritarian regimes which surround it. Even when the Palestinians were given a choice they chose the terrorist organization of Hamas to represent them, whose attitude toward Israel is as we've already stated above.
Lest we forget, we still have a rearmed Hezbollah on Israel's northern border and Iran with its soon-to-be fully operational nuclear reactor just waiting for the right moment to make all their dreams of causing Israel to cease to exist come true. And if that horror ever did come to pass, I have no doubt that this would not settle the matter as the next step would be to seek out the Jews they "missed" in the rest of the world, along with anyone else which stood in their way.
It continues to amaze me still that we Aemricans haven't seem to come to the realization that Isael's enemies are OUR ENEMIES! The God in whom we trust and the freedom under which we live are offensive to them and they will never be satisfied until we are all gone. And until this nation comes to understand that, we are just making this goal that much easier for them to attain.
The truth of the matter is, as I see it, is that the decades of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis were and continue to be nothing more than buying time for the enemies of Israel to strengthen their positions. The Palestinians and their allies have never been serious about wanting their own state co-existing alongside Israel - they want their own state to exist INSTEAD of Israel. Organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah which essentially are running the show have made this crystal clear.
Should the negotiations ever get to a point where a fledgling Palestinian state comes to exist, the West Bank is the most likely location for it. We have already seen how well this has worked out in microcosm with Gaza the past five years, haven't we?
In my opinion, there is no way the Muslim world will ever accept the existence of Israel for many reasons. We have the long-standing ancestral animosity between the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Jacob.
The advent of Islam has only added yet another unresolvable bone of contention between them and the democracy practiced in Israel is itself an affront to the authoritarian regimes which surround it. Even when the Palestinians were given a choice they chose the terrorist organization of Hamas to represent them, whose attitude toward Israel is as we've already stated above.
Lest we forget, we still have a rearmed Hezbollah on Israel's northern border and Iran with its soon-to-be fully operational nuclear reactor just waiting for the right moment to make all their dreams of causing Israel to cease to exist come true. And if that horror ever did come to pass, I have no doubt that this would not settle the matter as the next step would be to seek out the Jews they "missed" in the rest of the world, along with anyone else which stood in their way.
It continues to amaze me still that we Aemricans haven't seem to come to the realization that Isael's enemies are OUR ENEMIES! The God in whom we trust and the freedom under which we live are offensive to them and they will never be satisfied until we are all gone. And until this nation comes to understand that, we are just making this goal that much easier for them to attain.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Letter to The Hour
This letter was submitted to The Hour (Norwalk, Connecticut) in response to an error-filled, misleading anti-Israel missive published August 19.
To the Editor:
It's always interesting to see what factual errors and misrepresentations will show up when someone criticizes our only real friend in the Middle East. It's also interesting to see how often Israel and its supporters are falsely accused of sins of which its enemies and detractors are guilty.
One found plenty of interest in Rod Lopez-Fabrega's letter published August 19.
For example, Lopez-Fabrega falsely stated that Israel "needs to account for only 25 percent of where and how it spends" the assistance it receives from America. In fact, Israel is required to spend approximately 70 percent of that assistance on military hardware purchased from the United States, purchases over which our government obviously has a veto.
Typically omitted from the letter is any reference to the aid we give Israel's Arab neighbors, assistance which far outstrips the amount we invest in Israel while going to regimes that are far less friendly and far from democratic. According to Wikipedia (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_–_United_States_relations#United_States_military_and_economic_aid), we annually provide approximately $2.2 billion to Egypt, $400 million to Jordan and $1 billion to the Palestinian Authority. (This is probably an underestimate, since we recently massively increased the aid we transfer to the Palestinian Authority.)
We're even in the process of selling $60 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia - a country that wouldn't even let our soldiers practice their own religion when we went there to protect it from Iraq and from which almost all of the 9/11 bombers came. This alone corresponds to about twenty years worth of military assistance to Israel and provides Saudi Arabia weapons against which Israel must, at great expense, be prepared to defend itself.
Lest we think we are at least getting paid for this equipment, the cost is itself dwarfed by the amount Saudi Arabia, along with the other OPEC members, extorts from us in the form of exorbitant prices for the oil we discovered for them.
Lopez-Fabrega also seems rather unhappy that supporters of the American-Israel partnership exercise their Constitutional right to try to influence our government, while ignoring the pervasive influence of the Arab oil states.
Twenty-five years ago, anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson wrote "The American House of Saud," in which he documented how immense Saudi Arabian wealth produced a dramatic shift in American foreign policy.
Mitchell Bard provided updated information on that influence this year with his book, "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East."
We need to be more aware of and vigilant to protect ourselves against these well-financed foreign lobbies perverting American policy, rather than being paranoid about loyal American citizens wisely exercising their Constitutional rights.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
To the Editor:
It's always interesting to see what factual errors and misrepresentations will show up when someone criticizes our only real friend in the Middle East. It's also interesting to see how often Israel and its supporters are falsely accused of sins of which its enemies and detractors are guilty.
One found plenty of interest in Rod Lopez-Fabrega's letter published August 19.
For example, Lopez-Fabrega falsely stated that Israel "needs to account for only 25 percent of where and how it spends" the assistance it receives from America. In fact, Israel is required to spend approximately 70 percent of that assistance on military hardware purchased from the United States, purchases over which our government obviously has a veto.
Typically omitted from the letter is any reference to the aid we give Israel's Arab neighbors, assistance which far outstrips the amount we invest in Israel while going to regimes that are far less friendly and far from democratic. According to Wikipedia (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_–_United_States_relations#United_States_military_and_economic_aid), we annually provide approximately $2.2 billion to Egypt, $400 million to Jordan and $1 billion to the Palestinian Authority. (This is probably an underestimate, since we recently massively increased the aid we transfer to the Palestinian Authority.)
We're even in the process of selling $60 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia - a country that wouldn't even let our soldiers practice their own religion when we went there to protect it from Iraq and from which almost all of the 9/11 bombers came. This alone corresponds to about twenty years worth of military assistance to Israel and provides Saudi Arabia weapons against which Israel must, at great expense, be prepared to defend itself.
Lest we think we are at least getting paid for this equipment, the cost is itself dwarfed by the amount Saudi Arabia, along with the other OPEC members, extorts from us in the form of exorbitant prices for the oil we discovered for them.
Lopez-Fabrega also seems rather unhappy that supporters of the American-Israel partnership exercise their Constitutional right to try to influence our government, while ignoring the pervasive influence of the Arab oil states.
Twenty-five years ago, anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson wrote "The American House of Saud," in which he documented how immense Saudi Arabian wealth produced a dramatic shift in American foreign policy.
Mitchell Bard provided updated information on that influence this year with his book, "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East."
We need to be more aware of and vigilant to protect ourselves against these well-financed foreign lobbies perverting American policy, rather than being paranoid about loyal American citizens wisely exercising their Constitutional rights.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
PRIMER Comment & Analysis
The Norwalk Hour has a handful of vicious anti-Israel letter writers. This is a PRIMER Comment: & Analysis written in response to a letter published August 19, 2010.
Letters to The Hour may be sent to letters@thehour.com.
One response submitted will be posted separately.
Quote: "... what Israelis have accomplished with that barren piece of real estate they have occupied since 1948 and at the same time decry the shameful way they have treated the previous occupants."
Comment:: This falsely implies that the Israelis came in from outside and kicked out everyone previously living there, and then illogically criticizes Israel's treatment of those people who supposedly aren't there! It also ignores the fact that the non-Jews who were there prior to the reestablishment of Israel were effectively there only because the previous, Jewish occupants had been kicked out.
Those who left their homes in what is now Israel did so as a consequence of the genocidal war launched by the six invading Arab armies on the day Israel was (not established but) reestablished. With few exceptions, they left their homes of their own volition, in contrast to the roughly 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of their homes in the surrounding Arab countries.
Of the Arab occupants of Palestine, those who remained in Israel are full citizens, with rights equal to those of Israel's Jewish citizens - with the exceptions that they are not required to serve in the army and are not subject to the religious authority of the Orthodox Jewish establishment.
Those who left Israel have indeed been treated horribly, but that treatment has primarily been at the hands of their Arab brethren and their own leaders. Israel had absolutely no involvement in their treatment between 1948 and 1967 and still has no involvement in the treatment of those in the surrounding Arab countries.
(It's worth checking yesterday's Daily Alert, which refers to a New York Times article describing a Lebanese law finally granting Palestinian Arabs the same rights to work as other foreigners, although they are still not allowed to work as engineers, lawyers and doctors, attend public schools, own property or pass on inheritances. The article in The Times may be read at .)
Israel took over the administration of the disputed territories in 1967, at which point the lives of the people living there improved dramatically, as roads, schools and hospitals were built and colleges and universities were finally allowed to open, but control over the lives of almost all Palestinian Arabs in those areas was transferred to the Palestinian Authority in the early years of the Oslo Process.
Quote: "The knee-jerk reaction from (presumably) American citizens over a mismanaged incident in Middle Eastern waters serves to raise more questions about the Israel- United States relationship."
Comment:: The back-handed slap at supporters of Israel was uncalled for, as is the implicit charge of dual loyalties made at the end of the letter.
As is typical, the Israel-hater here and elsewhere accuses Israel and its supporters of that which Israel's opponents are guilty.
The criticism of Israel has been "knee-jerk," while most of the commentaries in support of Israel have been nuanced.
Quote: "'Since the Six- Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel,' as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt put it in their article four years ago for the London Review of Books. One might begin to wonder why this is so, considering that this unquestioning relationship has harmed US Middle Eastern policy toward all the other states in the Middle East."
Comment:: This accusation is frequently made, but is divorced from reality and has been convincingly debunked by many experts, including Barry Rubin as well as Dennis Ross and David Makovsky in their recent book "Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East."
Quote: "One answer is that Israel, located in a hostile neighborhood, is an island of democracy that shares our values. Again, Mearsheimer and Walt question the shared values: 'Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship.' Are these shared values when a very large portion of Israel's population is treated as third- class citizens?"
Comment:: This is patently false. In contrast to every other country in the Middle East (Lebanon is far from alone in not allowing Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, even Jordan - which comprises nearly 4/5 of the territory of the Palestine Mandate - does not allow Jews to be citizens or even own property, and the supposedly moderate leaders of the Palestinian Authority insist no Israelis will be allowed to even remain in their homes if it ever agrees to the establishment of another state) citizenship is available to all, with non-Jews comprising approximate a fifth of Israeli citizens and, as noted, enjoying equal rights. The Law of Return does not discriminate against non-Jews; it merely provides an additional and quite reasonable means by which Jews can attain citizenship in their homeland.
Quote: "Another question arises when one notes that the US provides at least $ 3 billion in direct aide to Israel every year and that Israel- unlike requirements placed on other countries that are recipients of US aid- needs to account for only 25 percent of where and how it spends that largesse. A good portion reportedly goes to ensuring that Israel is militarily the most powerful entity in the Middle East."
Comment:: Another bunch of false assertions, along with massive errors of deliberate omission.
Rather than Israel not needing to account for 3/4 of the aid it gets, about 70 percent must be used to buy American military hardware. (See.)
All the assistance Israel gets is military assistance and is effectively dwarfed by both the economic and military aid America gives to Arab states.
Israel receives about $3 billion per year in military assistance. With Egypt getting about $2.2 billion per year, Jordan getting around $400 million per year and even the Palestinian Authority getting about $1 billion per year (see), the amount of aid given those three de facto states alone is about a half billion a year more than the aid provided to Israel.
Additionally, the United States is planning to sell an additional $60 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia. That amounts to about 20 times the annual military assistance to Israel and is weaponry against which Israel must be prepared to defend itself.
All these amounts are dwarfed by the massive amounts of cash extorted from us, and from other oil-consuming nations, by Saudi Arabia and other members of the OPEC oil cartel. Saudi Arabia is effectively paying us with money it's extorted from us.
Quote: "A more immediately troubling question pops up when one begins to note the undue influence the Israel lobby has on the US government. We have seen how presidential hopefuls must genuflect to AIPAC ( American Israel Public Affairs Committee) before every US election, and how any government official or member of the media who raises even a slight question about the relationship between US and Israel is made to pay dearly for the 'error in judgment.' One small but recent example of effects on the media is the fate suffered by veteran journalist Helen Thomas of the press corps attending the White House. OK, so Helen was careless in her comments, but banishment forever?"
Comment:: The writer misleads re the real revelation of the Thomas incident. Her candid remarks made it clear her biased positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict were based on bigotry. With her many years as a member of the press with what we now know was undeserved respect, she had a tremendous amount of influence. One an only speculate about how much hatred she instilled in other reporters and how much of the misinformation, disinformation and distortion endemic in Middle East reporting effectively originated with the influence of Helen Thomas.
Quote: "Far more serious is the US commitment to go to war against all comers if an intemperate Israeli leader moves unilaterally to attack his neighbors."
Comment:: The writer falsely implies there has been a problem with "intemperate" Israeli leaders arbitrarily attacking innocent neighbors. As is typical, this is the reverse of reality.
Quote: "Then there is the influence AIPAC is quite openly exerting on US College campuses, indoctrinating young campus leaders to the cause of Israel as potential movers and shakers of future US governments."
Comment:: The writer apparently wants to remove basic American rights to supporters of the Middle East's only democracy.
Quote: "It is clear and understandable that any Israeli citizen will do whatever it takes to protect the land he or she claims- rightly or wrongly-- as a birthright."
Comment:: The Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael goes back more than 3,000 years. None of the other peoples living there at that time has endured as an identifiable entity.
Quote: "However, in the case of AIPAC, which demonstrably has a huge influence on the American government, is it a case of the tail wagging the dog?"
Comment:: All Americans have the right to try to influence their government. AIPAC and its members recognize the shared interests of America and Israel and recognize American support for Israel is in America's best interest. If anything, America has used its influence with Israel to pressure Israel to take steps which have not always been in either Israel's interest or America's interest.
Missing from the writer's missive is any indication of the massive influence of the vast Arab lobby, a lobby which (unlike Israel) does not share core interests with America.
"The American House of Saud, The Secret Petrodollar Connection," by Steven Emerson, is enlightening even though it's 25 years old.
A more recent book, "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," by Mitchell Bard, was published this year. Information may be found at, where it is explained:
"The so-called "Israel Lobby" has been widely denounced and demonized in the media; but its power pales in comparison to the decades-long corruption of American interests by Arab governments. Indeed, for more than seventy years, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been shaped by a misguided emphasis on pleasing and placating the Arab states. This outlook has ensured that the United States pays disproportionate attention to their interests, assisting Arab countries-all of them dictatorial regimes with abysmal human rights records-that do not share our values, and often work to subvert our interests.
"Historically, the Arab lobby consisted of the oil industry, Christian missionaries, and current or former US diplomats. Arabists in the State Department, many of them openly anti-Semitic, tried to prevent America from recognizing Israel in 1948 and since independence have waged a bureaucratic guerrilla war to undermine the alliance that formed between America and the only democracy in the Middle East.
"The most powerful member of the Arab lobby is Saudi Arabia, which has a nearly 80-year relationship with the United States. From the earliest days when American companies discovered oil in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis have used a variety of tactics including threats and bribes to coerce U.S. policymakers to ignore their human rights abuses, support of terrorism, and opposition to American interests. Today, the Arab Lobby's goal is feeding America's oil addiction, obtaining more sophisticated weaponry, and weakening our alliance with a democratic Israel."
Quote: The name 'American Israel Public Affairs Committee' raises the question about the placement of its members' primary loyalties- all presumably American citizens. That question is: Would changing the name to 'Israel American Public Affairs Committee' be more representative of the priorities of its members?"
Comment:: This is a thinly veiled attack on the loyalty of American citizens who happen to believe America has more in common with a Western-oriented, multicultural democracy like Israel than it does with regressive and regressive, autocratic and theocratic Arab and Muslim regimes and thugocracies.
Letters to The Hour may be sent to letters@thehour.com.
One response submitted will be posted separately.
Quote: "... what Israelis have accomplished with that barren piece of real estate they have occupied since 1948 and at the same time decry the shameful way they have treated the previous occupants."
Comment:: This falsely implies that the Israelis came in from outside and kicked out everyone previously living there, and then illogically criticizes Israel's treatment of those people who supposedly aren't there! It also ignores the fact that the non-Jews who were there prior to the reestablishment of Israel were effectively there only because the previous, Jewish occupants had been kicked out.
Those who left their homes in what is now Israel did so as a consequence of the genocidal war launched by the six invading Arab armies on the day Israel was (not established but) reestablished. With few exceptions, they left their homes of their own volition, in contrast to the roughly 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of their homes in the surrounding Arab countries.
Of the Arab occupants of Palestine, those who remained in Israel are full citizens, with rights equal to those of Israel's Jewish citizens - with the exceptions that they are not required to serve in the army and are not subject to the religious authority of the Orthodox Jewish establishment.
Those who left Israel have indeed been treated horribly, but that treatment has primarily been at the hands of their Arab brethren and their own leaders. Israel had absolutely no involvement in their treatment between 1948 and 1967 and still has no involvement in the treatment of those in the surrounding Arab countries.
(It's worth checking yesterday's Daily Alert
Israel took over the administration of the disputed territories in 1967, at which point the lives of the people living there improved dramatically, as roads, schools and hospitals were built and colleges and universities were finally allowed to open, but control over the lives of almost all Palestinian Arabs in those areas was transferred to the Palestinian Authority in the early years of the Oslo Process.
Quote: "The knee-jerk reaction from (presumably) American citizens over a mismanaged incident in Middle Eastern waters serves to raise more questions about the Israel- United States relationship."
Comment:: The back-handed slap at supporters of Israel was uncalled for, as is the implicit charge of dual loyalties made at the end of the letter.
As is typical, the Israel-hater here and elsewhere accuses Israel and its supporters of that which Israel's opponents are guilty.
The criticism of Israel has been "knee-jerk," while most of the commentaries in support of Israel have been nuanced.
Quote: "'Since the Six- Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel,' as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt put it in their article four years ago for the London Review of Books. One might begin to wonder why this is so, considering that this unquestioning relationship has harmed US Middle Eastern policy toward all the other states in the Middle East."
Comment:: This accusation is frequently made, but is divorced from reality and has been convincingly debunked by many experts, including Barry Rubin as well as Dennis Ross and David Makovsky in their recent book "Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East."
Quote: "One answer is that Israel, located in a hostile neighborhood, is an island of democracy that shares our values. Again, Mearsheimer and Walt question the shared values: 'Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship.' Are these shared values when a very large portion of Israel's population is treated as third- class citizens?"
Comment:: This is patently false. In contrast to every other country in the Middle East (Lebanon is far from alone in not allowing Palestinian Arabs to become citizens, even Jordan - which comprises nearly 4/5 of the territory of the Palestine Mandate - does not allow Jews to be citizens or even own property, and the supposedly moderate leaders of the Palestinian Authority insist no Israelis will be allowed to even remain in their homes if it ever agrees to the establishment of another state) citizenship is available to all, with non-Jews comprising approximate a fifth of Israeli citizens and, as noted, enjoying equal rights. The Law of Return does not discriminate against non-Jews; it merely provides an additional and quite reasonable means by which Jews can attain citizenship in their homeland.
Quote: "Another question arises when one notes that the US provides at least $ 3 billion in direct aide to Israel every year and that Israel- unlike requirements placed on other countries that are recipients of US aid- needs to account for only 25 percent of where and how it spends that largesse. A good portion reportedly goes to ensuring that Israel is militarily the most powerful entity in the Middle East."
Comment:: Another bunch of false assertions, along with massive errors of deliberate omission.
Rather than Israel not needing to account for 3/4 of the aid it gets, about 70 percent must be used to buy American military hardware. (See
All the assistance Israel gets is military assistance and is effectively dwarfed by both the economic and military aid America gives to Arab states.
Israel receives about $3 billion per year in military assistance. With Egypt getting about $2.2 billion per year, Jordan getting around $400 million per year and even the Palestinian Authority getting about $1 billion per year (see
Additionally, the United States is planning to sell an additional $60 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia. That amounts to about 20 times the annual military assistance to Israel and is weaponry against which Israel must be prepared to defend itself.
All these amounts are dwarfed by the massive amounts of cash extorted from us, and from other oil-consuming nations, by Saudi Arabia and other members of the OPEC oil cartel. Saudi Arabia is effectively paying us with money it's extorted from us.
Quote: "A more immediately troubling question pops up when one begins to note the undue influence the Israel lobby has on the US government. We have seen how presidential hopefuls must genuflect to AIPAC ( American Israel Public Affairs Committee) before every US election, and how any government official or member of the media who raises even a slight question about the relationship between US and Israel is made to pay dearly for the 'error in judgment.' One small but recent example of effects on the media is the fate suffered by veteran journalist Helen Thomas of the press corps attending the White House. OK, so Helen was careless in her comments, but banishment forever?"
Comment:: The writer misleads re the real revelation of the Thomas incident. Her candid remarks made it clear her biased positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict were based on bigotry. With her many years as a member of the press with what we now know was undeserved respect, she had a tremendous amount of influence. One an only speculate about how much hatred she instilled in other reporters and how much of the misinformation, disinformation and distortion endemic in Middle East reporting effectively originated with the influence of Helen Thomas.
Quote: "Far more serious is the US commitment to go to war against all comers if an intemperate Israeli leader moves unilaterally to attack his neighbors."
Comment:: The writer falsely implies there has been a problem with "intemperate" Israeli leaders arbitrarily attacking innocent neighbors. As is typical, this is the reverse of reality.
Quote: "Then there is the influence AIPAC is quite openly exerting on US College campuses, indoctrinating young campus leaders to the cause of Israel as potential movers and shakers of future US governments."
Comment:: The writer apparently wants to remove basic American rights to supporters of the Middle East's only democracy.
Quote: "It is clear and understandable that any Israeli citizen will do whatever it takes to protect the land he or she claims- rightly or wrongly-- as a birthright."
Comment:: The Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael goes back more than 3,000 years. None of the other peoples living there at that time has endured as an identifiable entity.
Quote: "However, in the case of AIPAC, which demonstrably has a huge influence on the American government, is it a case of the tail wagging the dog?"
Comment:: All Americans have the right to try to influence their government. AIPAC and its members recognize the shared interests of America and Israel and recognize American support for Israel is in America's best interest. If anything, America has used its influence with Israel to pressure Israel to take steps which have not always been in either Israel's interest or America's interest.
Missing from the writer's missive is any indication of the massive influence of the vast Arab lobby, a lobby which (unlike Israel) does not share core interests with America.
"The American House of Saud, The Secret Petrodollar Connection," by Steven Emerson, is enlightening even though it's 25 years old.
A more recent book, "The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," by Mitchell Bard, was published this year. Information may be found at
"The so-called "Israel Lobby" has been widely denounced and demonized in the media; but its power pales in comparison to the decades-long corruption of American interests by Arab governments. Indeed, for more than seventy years, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been shaped by a misguided emphasis on pleasing and placating the Arab states. This outlook has ensured that the United States pays disproportionate attention to their interests, assisting Arab countries-all of them dictatorial regimes with abysmal human rights records-that do not share our values, and often work to subvert our interests.
"Historically, the Arab lobby consisted of the oil industry, Christian missionaries, and current or former US diplomats. Arabists in the State Department, many of them openly anti-Semitic, tried to prevent America from recognizing Israel in 1948 and since independence have waged a bureaucratic guerrilla war to undermine the alliance that formed between America and the only democracy in the Middle East.
"The most powerful member of the Arab lobby is Saudi Arabia, which has a nearly 80-year relationship with the United States. From the earliest days when American companies discovered oil in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudis have used a variety of tactics including threats and bribes to coerce U.S. policymakers to ignore their human rights abuses, support of terrorism, and opposition to American interests. Today, the Arab Lobby's goal is feeding America's oil addiction, obtaining more sophisticated weaponry, and weakening our alliance with a democratic Israel."
Quote: The name 'American Israel Public Affairs Committee' raises the question about the placement of its members' primary loyalties- all presumably American citizens. That question is: Would changing the name to 'Israel American Public Affairs Committee' be more representative of the priorities of its members?"
Comment:: This is a thinly veiled attack on the loyalty of American citizens who happen to believe America has more in common with a Western-oriented, multicultural democracy like Israel than it does with regressive and regressive, autocratic and theocratic Arab and Muslim regimes and thugocracies.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Middle East Coexistence? On Aisle Two, Next to the Cornflakes
This article was originally published in PajamasMedia. It is posted here with the permission of the authors.
A wonderful supermarket opens in the West Bank, thrilling the Israeli and Arab shoppers (who get along just fine, thank you very much).
August 11, 2010 - by Lenny and Shellie Ben-David
The parking lot started the amazing experience — late model cars with Palestinian green and white license plates, interspersed with Israeli vans and jalopies with their black and yellow plates.
The Rami Levy supermarket is located a few hundred yards from the Gush Etzyon junction in the West Bank, 10 miles south of Jerusalem on the road to Hebron. Next door is a former Jordanian army fort, built at the strategic crossroads after the Jewish communities in the Etzyon bloc were wiped out in 1948.
The store opened in June and has been packed with Arabs and Israelis every day except on the Jewish Sabbath or holidays.
Rami Levy is a savvy businessman who over the years expanded his stall in the Jerusalem shuk into a very successful national Israeli chain. He would not have opened his new store in the middle of Judea — the southern half of the West Bank — if he wasn’t certain it was financially, politically, and militarily secure. Says my wife Shellie (the real shopper in our family):
My Rami Levy shopping is still a wonder to me: if I need a few items, I don’t have to shlep into Jerusalem, but can just hop in my car and in five minutes be at the supermarket. Today, as I was whizzing down an aisle in my jeans skirt, Lands End shirt, and crocs, I noticed five or six very well-dressed Arab ladies in their caftans and hijabs, probably in their late 20s to early 30s, checking out the store. They were speaking among themselves as they gazed and pointed at items. At one point a worker in his Rami Levy uniform came over to speak to them in Arabic. Later, I saw that they had finally settled in the shampoo aisle, comparing different brands. Women will be women.
Every customer — Jew, Christian, Muslim — gets “wanded” with a metal detector by a security guard on the way into the store. Once through the door, though, I’ve experienced an occasional “traffic jam” of grocery carts. Some Arab families — often a whole family on a sightseeing trip in their holiday finery — just freeze while they take in the sight. And, of course, one of Levy’s marketing specialists chose the entrance to stack a kind of cookies that the Bethlehem, Hebron, or village residents are attracted to. I predict that as Ramadan approaches, the store will packed to capacity with Palestinian delicacies and customers.
Press accounts, political pundits, and pontificating politicians portray the situation in the West Bank as bleak and insoluble. Perhaps that’s why I was in awe on my first visit, when I saw Palestinian families and Israeli “settlers” mingling in the aisles, thumping the watermelons and squeezing the plums. My checkout cashier was a Jewish woman from Kiryat Arba of Moroccan descent, on the cash register next to her was a blue-eyed Muslim woman from Halul, and working the register behind me was a member of the Bnei Menashe tribe from India who had formalized her conversion to Judaism.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised, however, since out here in the Etzyon bloc region we “settlers” had good relations with many Palestinian craftsmen and workers who live in the area. The intifada in 2000 quashed almost all relations and ties, but in recent months they’ve been reestablished. I’m back in touch with Khalil, who taught me how to prune my grapevines, and Mahmoud, who was the subcontractor on a construction project in my home 14 years ago.
Across the street from my house one Arab crew is currently working on the remodeling of a house. (Careful, they mustn’t add on to the house lest they violate the settlement freeze!) Next door to them is a Jewish crew remodeling another house, owned by a strong nationalist who insists on employing “Jewish labor.” But I think I’ve spotted workers passing over a bag of cement or facing stone if the other team had a temporary shortage.
Hebrew, Arabic, and English are the languages I hear in Rami Levy. Many of the Palestinian male shoppers speak Hebrew, indicating that they had once worked in Israel or the “settlements” prior to the intifada. They translate their Hebrew conversations to their wives and children.
From Shellie:
At the dairy case one male Palestinian customer wasn’t sure if he was buying sour cream or yogurt. I looked at the bar codes and signs and read the numbers to myself in a low tone in English. When I pointed out the barcode and the products to the gentleman in Hebrew, he had already heard my English, so he switched to perfect English. English may very well be the second language in that store, especially for the Arabs from Beit Jala, Hebron, or Bethlehem who have no need for Hebrew, and their English is excellent.
Summer boredom is probably the supermarket’s worst foe right now. Some local Arab youth a mile down the road in the direction of Hebron have resumed their occasional rock throwing at Israeli cars. (Contrary to the propaganda claims of “apartheid roads,” Route 60, the major thoroughfare here, is open to all — Muslim and Jew — who too often and tragically compete for the most reckless driver award.) Some local rabbis have expressed concern that young Arab male workers and stockboys will chat up and flirt with Jewish women workers, and indeed I saw the light banter between them behind the bakery counter one day.
Knives and boxcutters are tools of the trade in supermarkets, just as knives were once the weapon of terrorists during the early stages of the intifada. One sign of newfound trust can be seen behind the butcher counter where almost all the men are Arabs, working in the Etzyon store as well as Levy’s Jerusalem stores with the largest and sharpest knives.
A boycott of settlement products is supposed to be in force in the Palestinian Authority, but that’s certainly not enforced at the supermarket. According to one blogger’s account:
I spoke to one Palestinian at the Rami Levy supermarket and she explains her reasons for abandoning the Palestinian shops: “Although it is far and needs more time, children enjoy the trip and feel they got out of jail, and I can find the goods that I want with low prices. Milk in Rami Levy is 9 shekels, while in Palestinian shops it’s 12 shekels, and this in itself is a big difference, not to mention other goods and offers.”
Abeer Taweel went once to see what is this “Rami Levy” everyone is talking about, to only find all her relatives and neighbors and acquaintances there purchasing all their needs for the whole week.
And Shellie:
Meanwhile, I needed my zucchinis. Last Thursday, I also arrived to find an empty zucchini bin, and I believe that prices are so good at Rami Levy’s that some produce sellers — Israeli and Palestinian — buy in bulk, and always on Thursday. Last week when I asked the produce worker (an Arab) what happened to the zucchinis, he just said, “Nigmar, Chalas, finished.” Today, he was a bit more sympathetic. “A new truckload just came in,” he said in Hebrew. “Go do a ‘sivuv’ round of shopping and come back.” So as he finished putting out the okra, I left him to do another sivuv in the store. I came back and he was now doing the carrots. “Madam, go do another sivuv. I’ll get to them.” So, around again I go. After I rechecked the store, I returned to the produce department. True to his word, he had wheeled out the zucchinis. He really didn’t have to restock the bin; everyone was descending on his cart and his pot of gold: fresh zucchinis at four shekels a kilo (about 50 cents a pound). I thanked him, and with a smile he said in Hebrew, “you’re welcome.”
A word of caution: I’m still on a slightly heightened state of alert — yellow, to use Homeland Security’s code — as I walk around Rami Levy. In the late 1990s and even in early 2000, there were several encouraging and productive joint Palestinian-Israeli products, but the Palestinian Authority — then led by Yasir Arafat — decided to abandon the road to peace and prosperity and chose to launch the bloody intifada that left thousands of Palestinians and Israelis dead and wounded.
Incredibly, none of the major Western newspapers have visited and reported on the Rami Levy phenomenon in Gush Etzyon, at least according to Google. One senior correspondent for a top American newspaper thanked me “for the tip,” but not a pixel has shown up in her paper. Can it be that the coexistence in aisle 2 and cooperation behind the meat counter run against the media narrative that Israeli “settlers” and Palestinians can never live together?
Maybe we’ll finally meet up with the press when Rami Levy opens his pizza shop and the catering hall on the second floor.
The writers live in Efrat. Shellie is an infant message instructor in Jerusalem at Shalva, the association for physically and mentally challenged children in Israel. Lenny served as a senior diplomat in Israel’s embassy in Washington. Today he is a public affairs consultant and blogs at www.lennybendavid.com.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Perils of a multicultural president
This op-ed by Jay Bergman was published in several newspapers, including the Waterbury Republican-American. It is posted here with the permission of the author.
By Jay Bergman
"Israelis distrust me because of my middle name."
This is how Barack Hussein Obama, in a recent interview on Israeli television, explained his unpopularity in Israel. What he said, in effect, is Israelis are bigots. This is in sharp contrast to what he thinks of Muslims, about whose supposed lack of self-esteem the president is so concerned that he tasked the head of NASA with raising it, despite the obvious irrelevance of such a task to NASA's mission of space exploration.
Obama's casual imputation of bigotry is empirically false. Israelis distrust Obama by large majorities — in one poll, 96 percent of respondents declared their lack of confidence in him — because they believe his policies are profoundly harmful to Israel's interests and may threaten its existence.
What is more, the president's charge is selective. American Jews are as cognizant as Israelis of his middle name, but the president does not accuse American Jews of bigotry, no doubt because they voted for him overwhelmingly two years ago and by and large still support him today.
But what makes his insinuation especially objectionable is it is directed against a U.S. ally and the only country in the Middle East with the same liberal values and democratic institutions. No amount of political stagecraft, such as Passover Seders in the White House this past spring, can obscure that sobering reality.
President Obama is not an anti-Semite. However, his disdain for Israel seems deeply rooted in an earlier period in his life. As a student at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he was exposed to the multiculturalism that remains today the conventional wisdom on American college campuses.
In essence, multiculturalism holds there are no objective standards of truth and morality and therefore no culture can be considered superior to another. In the absence of ethical absolutes of any kind, all cultures are equal.
But there is one country to whose culture this moral relativism is not applied — the United States — the inherent depravity of which the multiculturalists in academia have enlarged to include Israel. In the multicultural credo, the white men who dominate America today, like the white men who created it, are irredeemably racist, sexist and imperialist, and thus the principal cause of exploitation and oppression around the world. So, as an ally of America and an extension of American values, Israel is complicit in this imperialism and irreversibly corrupted by it.
The result today is a U.S. president who betrays allies such as Poland and the Czech Republic, appeases adversaries such as Russia, and worst of all does almost nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which even if unused would facilitate the spread of an Islamic radicalism antithetical to all that is best in America: religious tolerance, the rule of law, individual rights and consensual government.
Because of his multiculturalism, Obama's foremost obligation as president, as he perceives it, is not to protect the American people and advance America's legitimate interests. Rather, it is to rise above such parochial considerations, and as a citizen of the world, help humanity achieve the moral rectitude he alone possesses. In Obama's own words, he has an obligation to "heal the planet."
But the humanity he seeks to save is not some indivisible entity whose values and aspirations are everywhere and at all times the same; rather it is riddled with hatreds so long-standing and immune to reason that they are impervious to negotiated settlement, much less to the pandering and flattery of which the president is so fond when meeting dictators and despots.
One only hopes that with the passage of time, Obama will see the world as it really is, not as he wishes it would be. Perhaps then he will protect and defend America, and support allies such as Israel instead of slandering them with malicious and wholly unfounded charges of bigotry.
His disdain and contempt, and ours as well, should be reserved for the world's real bigots.
His disdain and contempt, and ours as well, should be reserved for the world's real bigots.
Jay Bergman is a history professor at Central Connecticut State University, a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars and author of "Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov."
By Jay Bergman
"Israelis distrust me because of my middle name."
This is how Barack Hussein Obama, in a recent interview on Israeli television, explained his unpopularity in Israel. What he said, in effect, is Israelis are bigots. This is in sharp contrast to what he thinks of Muslims, about whose supposed lack of self-esteem the president is so concerned that he tasked the head of NASA with raising it, despite the obvious irrelevance of such a task to NASA's mission of space exploration.
Obama's casual imputation of bigotry is empirically false. Israelis distrust Obama by large majorities — in one poll, 96 percent of respondents declared their lack of confidence in him — because they believe his policies are profoundly harmful to Israel's interests and may threaten its existence.
What is more, the president's charge is selective. American Jews are as cognizant as Israelis of his middle name, but the president does not accuse American Jews of bigotry, no doubt because they voted for him overwhelmingly two years ago and by and large still support him today.
But what makes his insinuation especially objectionable is it is directed against a U.S. ally and the only country in the Middle East with the same liberal values and democratic institutions. No amount of political stagecraft, such as Passover Seders in the White House this past spring, can obscure that sobering reality.
President Obama is not an anti-Semite. However, his disdain for Israel seems deeply rooted in an earlier period in his life. As a student at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he was exposed to the multiculturalism that remains today the conventional wisdom on American college campuses.
In essence, multiculturalism holds there are no objective standards of truth and morality and therefore no culture can be considered superior to another. In the absence of ethical absolutes of any kind, all cultures are equal.
But there is one country to whose culture this moral relativism is not applied — the United States — the inherent depravity of which the multiculturalists in academia have enlarged to include Israel. In the multicultural credo, the white men who dominate America today, like the white men who created it, are irredeemably racist, sexist and imperialist, and thus the principal cause of exploitation and oppression around the world. So, as an ally of America and an extension of American values, Israel is complicit in this imperialism and irreversibly corrupted by it.
The result today is a U.S. president who betrays allies such as Poland and the Czech Republic, appeases adversaries such as Russia, and worst of all does almost nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which even if unused would facilitate the spread of an Islamic radicalism antithetical to all that is best in America: religious tolerance, the rule of law, individual rights and consensual government.
Because of his multiculturalism, Obama's foremost obligation as president, as he perceives it, is not to protect the American people and advance America's legitimate interests. Rather, it is to rise above such parochial considerations, and as a citizen of the world, help humanity achieve the moral rectitude he alone possesses. In Obama's own words, he has an obligation to "heal the planet."
But the humanity he seeks to save is not some indivisible entity whose values and aspirations are everywhere and at all times the same; rather it is riddled with hatreds so long-standing and immune to reason that they are impervious to negotiated settlement, much less to the pandering and flattery of which the president is so fond when meeting dictators and despots.
One only hopes that with the passage of time, Obama will see the world as it really is, not as he wishes it would be. Perhaps then he will protect and defend America, and support allies such as Israel instead of slandering them with malicious and wholly unfounded charges of bigotry.
His disdain and contempt, and ours as well, should be reserved for the world's real bigots.
His disdain and contempt, and ours as well, should be reserved for the world's real bigots.
Jay Bergman is a history professor at Central Connecticut State University, a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars and author of "Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov."
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Open Letter to President Obama: Please Stop Arming Hezbollah
Dear President Obama:
Over the last few years, we have provided over a half billion dollars in military assistance, including sophisticated weaponry, to Lebanon and also provided important training.
The hopes the arose when the assassination of Rafic Hariri led to the Cedar Revolution have been dashed. Yesterday's attack on Israelis in Israel by members of the Lebanese army have made it obvious that assistance is effectively assistance to Hezbollah, the terrorist group which now has intimate ties with the army and a veto power over the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah is not just anti-Israel; it is a bitter enemy of America.
I never thought we should have provided military assistance to Lebanon in the first place; we certainly shouldn't be providing any assistance now.
Please stop providing military assistance to Lebanon — at least until Hezbollah no longer has a role in that government.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
Over the last few years, we have provided over a half billion dollars in military assistance, including sophisticated weaponry, to Lebanon and also provided important training.
The hopes the arose when the assassination of Rafic Hariri led to the Cedar Revolution have been dashed. Yesterday's attack on Israelis in Israel by members of the Lebanese army have made it obvious that assistance is effectively assistance to Hezbollah, the terrorist group which now has intimate ties with the army and a veto power over the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah is not just anti-Israel; it is a bitter enemy of America.
I never thought we should have provided military assistance to Lebanon in the first place; we certainly shouldn't be providing any assistance now.
Please stop providing military assistance to Lebanon — at least until Hezbollah no longer has a role in that government.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein
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